


drop the beat hard now (to the magical rhythm)

by Hectopascal



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (Movies), Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Harry Potter Setting, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-10
Updated: 2016-04-10
Packaged: 2018-06-01 08:55:03
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,449
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6511477
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Hectopascal/pseuds/Hectopascal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Guardians worry the Professors and intimidate a good portion of the student population. (They terrify the rest and this is the worst kept secret in Hogwarts history.) It is all, simply, because nobody understands.</p>
<p>They rather like it that way.</p>
            </blockquote>





	drop the beat hard now (to the magical rhythm)

**Author's Note:**

> yes, really, i went there. i couldn't resist.

*

_“The nature of things is in the habit of concealing itself.”_

*

Gamora is some kind of fae. This is the agreed upon truth that has never been confirmed because there have been other non-human students—Hogwarts is one of the most progressive schools in the world, after all—but none that were quite so…obvious about it.

Usually, those who are different hide. They take potions or learn glamour from an early age to blend in better. There are talismans that work as cloaks and _actual_ cloaks that shield one’s true appearance and various spells that do the trick too but need to be renewed more often.

It is easy to hide. Wizards go out of their way to make it easy and cheap, for understandable reasons.

Yet, Gamora uses none of them. She walks through the halls and the crowd parts around her and she never appears to notice. Her eyes are always fixed straight ahead in the far off distance and she treats everything and everyone who falls into her peripherals as if they do not exist at all.

She is clearly Other. Her cheekbones are too high to be aristocratic and her hair falls like spun copper—this is not a metaphor, it _gleams_ unnaturally akin to true metal. Markings frame her face, curving lines with ridges like scar tissue but softer and more natural. It’s a sharp juxtaposition to her constantly hard expression.

(She can hide those too, if she chooses. The girls in the lavatory debate it together, why would she ever want to show them? They’re _ugly_ , aren’t they, such a _deformity?_ )

That says nothing about her skin, which is a permanent shade of leafy green.

Gamora touches no one voluntarily and no one touches her. From what is observed, she has not done anything overtly wrong, merely remained cold and unapproachable, but that is enough to make her a pariah.

She is a skilled dueler, possibly the best of all the lower years. This does nothing to bolster her reputation as it is impossible to watch her sling spell chains and shoot jinxes at rapid-fire speed and toss the odd approved curse in here and there and think of her as anything but dangerous.

When students are not subtly eyeing her exposed hands or the markings on her face or her strange-looking inhuman hair, their gaze drops to the green and white scarf folded fashionably around her neck and think, _A Slytherin if there ever was one._

They’re not wrong.

But they aren’t a hundred percent right either.

*

Groot is weird too, but different from Gamora’s alien nature.

For one thing, he only has the first name. Or maybe it’s the last, he’s never said.

When he is sorted, eleven years old and not a transfer student, he already stands two heads taller than all the other firsties and when his name is called—after Gauthier, Alex, “RAVENCLAW!”—it is just the one word, “Groot.”

He steps out of the crowd, not that he needs to do that to stand out, and quietly announces, “I am Groot,” like everybody doesn’t already know. Then he strolls, totally relaxed, over to the stool at the head of the Great Hall where he proceeds to dwarf it and, somehow, the Head Table too.

He sits under the hat for a full five minutes, during which the younger students begin to squirm with impatience because the feast is being pushed further and further back, before the brim rips wide and screams, “SLYTHERIN!”

There are a few rumors that he has giant’s blood in him. There are nastier (and much quieter) whispers that it is actually _troll blood_.

The select number who believe that don’t vocalize it often because Groot is, and this is where the weird part comes in, freakishly nice. Not just for a Slytherin either, but in general he’s an even-tempered, helpful, polite boy.

He helps his yearmates with their homework. He goes to all the Quidditch games and claps whenever anybody scores. No one has ever seen him frown or say an unkind word to anyone. See above: really _weird._ But an alright sort of bloke.

Groot’s specialty is shaping up to be transfiguration. He’s some kind of genius with it and that isn’t an exaggeration. The first day of class he walks in, blinks for a second at the matchstick he’s supposed to turn into a needle, and then waves his wand.

The entire classroom sprouts a miniature forest. It comes out of the floor, pushes through the walls, and sinks through the ceiling. Desks and benches vanish under a wave of magical greenery growing faster and thicker and (alarmingly) _bigger._

While the students yell and dodge shooting saplings and the Professor glances about helplessly for an explanation, Groot plucks a delicate white flower from a nearby vine, tucks it into his hair, and looks silently pleased with himself.

(He second best subject, by a shred, is Herbology. Nobody is surprised.)

He gets a week of detention and promoted to the third year class. Everyone agrees that this is a fair trade.

That’s the first time anyone spots his devious streak. It only makes him more likeable.

Then there is…an incident. It’s not a fight, by the loosest definition, and not quite a duel either. It’s an _incident_ , pure and simple, and not a good one.

The full details are never publicized but there’s an edited version floating around somewhere. The end result is this:

Four Gryffindor fifth-year students in the hospital wing overnight and then transferred to St. Mungos. They do not come back.  Groot questioned by the Headmistress and shortly released. That’s it, except for a hallway blocked off for cleaning.

The first students to sneak past the barrier will report that the water on the floor was red. The information spreads like influenza and soon the whole school knows.

(There are some who claim to be unsurprised. _He’s a Slytherin, you know_ , they’ll say superiorly, _of course, this happened eventually. You can’t trust any of them._ )

The most popular version of events goes like this:

They attack Groot first. This much is agreed upon. They must have struck first, everyone knows Gryffindors are impulsive and Groot would never have done anything wrong without significant provocation.

So, he doesn’t start the fight, but he doesn’t back down.

Here the story differs from teller to teller because they don’t know for sure and pick the more theatrical minutiae based on the audience.

Stunners fly and spells collide that should never mix and something goes wrong and it all backfires terribly and four students end up in the long-term ward for Magical Experimentation Injuries.

Groot summons his forest and the wood obeys like a living thing that knows and thinks, branches snatching at robes and latching onto limbs, twisting and yanking and shoving splinters deep into tender flesh and there is so much damage the Madame cannot fix it on her own and the trauma is so bad that the victims choose never to return.

And Groot stands above them with that look on his face, the one from the very first transfiguration class when he brought forth wilderness from nothing and his conjurement had taken the Professors hours to get rid of, a serene expression of quiet pleasure.

_I did this,_ that look seems to say, _and I’m going to get away with it. I’m quite proud of it, actually. What do you think?_

After that, no one likes Groot quite so much anymore. His behavior doesn’t change in the slightest even as his popularity ebbs and vanishes. In retrospect, such a thing is telling. It’s as if it never mattered to him at all.

Here’s the thing: it didn’t.

*

Drax is a beater on the Quidditch team and a budding star. He can be the next Krum, or so rave his fans. He’s big and bulky with muscle, but surprisingly agile on a broom, and he wields the heavy bat like he was born to it, slamming bludgers left and right to devastating effect in matches.

Something happens to him over the summer. He never says what, but he comes back to start his sixth year and at first glance, he’s unrecognizable.

There’s a manic cast to his gaze, which now always stares too wide and too long and a bit too uncomprehending. He’s shaved his head and gotten full body tattoos. The ink is a bright, eye-catching red, so severe it seems to give his skin an unhealthy greyish tinge.

One of his housemates mock him about the color scheme—something about advertising for the enemy—and Drax beats him into a pulp with his bare hands. He’s from a third generation pureblood family and he never once goes for his wand, choosing instead to fight like a _Muggle_. It’s terrifying. It also gets him kicked off the team and a lot of the leeway people are willing to give him for certain eccentricities goes with it.

His grades remain perfectly average, but he spends more and more time lurking in the Restricted Section of the library, pouring over tomes best left unopened and forgotten. He’s trying to figure out how to do something, probably something illegal and dangerous and Dark, and it isn’t going well judging by the forbidding scowl on his face when he reads.

The longer his strange behavior goes on, the more apprehensive the students get. When he finally does whatever he’s planning to do, it isn’t going to be pretty.

Avoiding Drax becomes synonymous with self-preservation.

*

No one knows what to make of Rocket at first.

He transfers in during his third year of schooling, which is rather unusual by itself, and he’s just plain _odd_ on top of that. He’s undersized and lean with a runty look to him. His features draw attention to the pointed shape of his face and something in his creepy smile resembles an animalistic snarl.

His arrival is heralded by a split-second Sorting. The hat barely touches his head before it instantly directs him to the home of the ambitious and cunning. For a long time, no one will understand why.

Rocket seems neither bothered nor unbothered by this. He forgets his tie more often than not, can’t be bothered by House tensions, and immediately takes a shine to Groot, who seems to equally enjoy his company even though Rocket is notoriously acerbic and just generally an unpleasant person to be around.

His true passion is Potions, which he’ll go on about at length to anyone who asks and quite a fair few who don’t. He blows up a caldron his first class and that pretty much sets the pace for the rest of the school year.

It isn’t that he’s _terrible_ at the subject exactly. He just has an unfortunate fondness for experimentation that makes the Potions Master want to rip his hair out and expel the boy simultaneously. He’s so enthusiastic about his explosive concoctions that nobody really takes much note about how he finagles extra time in the lab and if he just so happens to vanish for days on end, that’s where they assume he is, plotting to blow up the school or something equally insane.

He _bites_ the first (and only) person to make fun of his name to his face and attends the detentions he’s assigned for the act like they were his idea in the first place and he’s doing the rest of them a favor by going. He doesn’t seem to know the meaning of the word punishment, or if he does, he doesn’t connect it to the same thing everybody else does.

After Rocket’s arrival at Hogwarts, a new rumor about the Forbidden Forest crops up. This happens every other day anyway, but that doesn’t explain why some of the older students swear to Morgana that they’ve seen a beast running through the trees.

It isn’t pale and swift like a werewolf, they say. The creature, according to the rumor mill, has dark fur and a tail and a mouthful of bristling teeth like a shark.

Rocket finds these tales hilarious and delights in egging the teller into giving more and more ridiculous descriptions. It’s also a popular theory that he rigged the whole thing just to see what would happen because honestly, that’s exactly his style.

*

This is what the hat says to him:

_Now, now, what’s this? Recent sorrow, a great loss, one that you have yet to relinquish. You worry that you are a coward but I see courage enough and, aye, bravery too. Godric’s house would be a good fit for you. Cheer and bluntness and strong bonds of friendship would help you heal quicker than anything else._

_But here – cleverness, an unconventional kind, I grant you, but a decent amount. Still, learning for learning’s sake will never be a passion of yours. You would succeed among ravens, but not thrive, no. We can do better. Oh ho, and here’s loyalty, just barely tapped but steady and deep._

_You are faithful for life, youngling, and that is a rare quality in one of any age, but beware, for it can be both a blessing and a curse. Best make sure you choose wisely._

_But… Ah! There you are—were you trying to hide?—I see ambition and ruthlessness and a selective kind of honor too, don’t deny it._

_Quite personable, aren’t you, when you want to be? You can make them like you, hm? You change yourself quietly, carefully, to achieve your desires without ever showing your true face. Yes. Yes, I see you quite clearly, you obviously belong to—_

And this is where Peter thinks, _Wait._

*

“Quill, Peter.”

“HUFFLEPUFF.”

*

This is the last thing the hat says to him, _Are you sure?_

_YES_ , Peter thinks as loudly and empathically as he can. He is very sure. This is where he wants to go. This is who he wants to be. His mom had been a ‘Puff and she’s the greatest witch Peter knows.

So he will wear a badger’s skin and have a serpent’s heart. It works for him.

He beams with delight walking over to join his housemates, all of them clad in yellow and black.

No one will see him coming.

That’s a pretty nice bonus too.

*

And later still when Peter finds Gamora, finds Rocket and Groot and Drax too, when they learn each other inside and out and grow together until they can’t quite recall what it’s like to be apart, then. Then people will wonder how exactly friendship sprung up between four Slytherins and a Hufflepuff.

And they have to keep wondering because the Guardians certainly aren’t telling.

**Author's Note:**

> also if anyone was wondering saal teaches quidditch, dey teaches astronomy, and yondu is that super senior hufflepuff delinquent who everyone respects more than the actual prefect (and peter is absolutely his favorite)


End file.
